Every island to a child is a treasure island.
P. D. JamesRead
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
Interpretation
Political correctness can suppress free speech and evoke fear among those who fought against oppressive regimes.
P. D. James critiques the concept of political correctness by comparing it to fascism, suggesting that it can restrict open dialogue and freedom of expression. This mindset may resonate particularly with individuals from previous generations who have experienced the harsh realities of war against true fascism, leading them to feel uncomfortable or threatened by modern constraints on speech.
In practice
During a debate about freedom of speech, this quote can be used to highlight concerns about political correctness.
Every island to a child is a treasure island.
If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other Βpeople. Nothing that happens to a writer β however happy, however tragic β is ever wasted.
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife's feelings and deprive his daughter than inconvenience a pub bar full of strangers. He wished there could be one memory of his dead child which wasn't tainted with guilt and regret.
One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.
Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief.
It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse; every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow.
It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?
We say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung, and anybody else who ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that a revolution is a class struggle.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.